Perfect Match Read online

  "Sounds great."

  Caleb turns to Nathaniel and tells him they are going to get a snack. He runs to the door, and Caleb walks up behind him. "Come on," he says to Nina. "We're ready."

  She stares at him as if they have never had a conversation, much less one thirty seconds ago. "To do what?" she asks.

  Patrick sits on a bench behind the courthouse, freezing his ass off, and watching Nathaniel whoop his way across a field. Why this child has so much energy at four-thirty in the afternoon is beyond him, but then he can remember back to when he and Nina used to spend entire days playing pond hockey without tiring or getting frostbite. Maybe time is only something you notice when you get old and have less of it at your disposal.

  The boy collapses beside Patrick, his cheeks a fiery red, his nose running. "Got a tissue, Patrick?"

  He shakes his head. "Sorry, Weed. Use your sleeve."

  Nathaniel laughs, and then does just that. He ducks his head beneath Patrick's arm, and it makes Patrick want to shout. If only Nina could see this, her son seeking out someone's touch--oh, God, what it would do for her morale right now. He hugs Nathaniel close, drops a kiss on the top of his head.

  "I like playing with you," Nathaniel says.

  "Well, I like playing with you too."

  "You don't yell."

  Patrick glances down at him. "Your mom been doing that?"

  Nathaniel shrugs, then nods. "It's like she got stolen and they left someone mean in her place who looks just like her. Someone who can't sit still and who doesn't hear me when I talk and when I do talk it's always giving her a headache." He looks into his lap. "I want my old mom back."

  "She wants that too, Weed." Patrick looks to the west, where the sun has begun to draw blood from the horizon. "Truth is, she's pretty nervous right now. She isn't sure what kind of news she's going to hear." When Nathaniel shrugs, he adds, "You know she loves you."

  "Well," the boy says defensively. "I love her too."

  Patrick nods. You're not the only one, he thinks.

  *

  "A mistrial?" I say, shaking my head. "No. Fisher, I can't go through this again. You know trials don't get any better with age."

  "You're thinking like a prosecutor," Fisher admonishes, "except this time, you're right." He turns around from the window where he is standing. "I want you to chew on something tonight."

  "What?"

  "Waiving the jury. I'll talk to Quentin in the morning, if you agree, and see if he's willing to let the judge decide the verdict."

  I stare at him. "You know that we were trying this case on the emotion, not the law. A jury might acquit based on emotion. But a judge is always going to rule based on the law. Are you crazy?"

  "No, Nina," Fisher answers soberly. "But neither were you."

  We lie in bed that night with the weight of a full moon pressing down on us. I have told Caleb about my conversation with Fisher, and now we both stare at the ceiling, as if the answer might appear, skywritten with stars. I want Caleb to take my hand across the great expanse of this bed. I need that, to believe we are not miles apart.

  "What do you think?" he asks.

  I turn to him. In the moonlight his profile is edged in gold, the color of courage. "I'm not making decisions by myself anymore," I answer.

  He comes up on an elbow, turning to me. "What would happen?"

  I swallow, and try to keep my voice from shaking. "Well, a judge is going to convict me, because legally, I committed murder. But the upside is ... I probably won't be sentenced as long as I would have been with a jury verdict."

  Suddenly Caleb's face looms over mine. "Nina ... you can't go to jail."

  I turn away, so that the tear slips down the side of my face he cannot see. "I knew I was taking this chance when I did it."

  His hands tighten on my shoulders. "You can't. You just can't."

  "I'll be back."

  "When?"

  "I don't know."

  Caleb buries his face in my neck, drawing in great draughts of air. And then suddenly I am clutching at him, too, as if there cannot be any distance between us today, because tomorrow there will be so much. I feel the rough pads of his hands mark my back; and the heat of his grief is searing. When he comes inside me I dig my nails into his shoulders, trying to leave behind a trace of myself. We make love with near violence, with so much emotion that the atmosphere around us hums. And then, like all things, it is over.

  "But I love you," Caleb says, his voice breaking, because in a perfect world, this should be all the excuse one needs.

  That night I dream I am walking into an ocean, the waves soaking the hem of my cotton nightgown. The water is cold, but not nearly as cold as it usually is in Maine, and the beach beneath is a smooth lip of sand. I keep walking, even when the water reaches my knees, even when it brushes my hips and my nightgown sticks to my body like a second skin. I keep walking, and the water comes up to my neck, my chin. By the time I go under I realize I am going to drown.

  At first I fight, trying to ration the air I have in my lungs. Then they start to burn, a circle of fire beneath my ribs. My wide eyes burst black, and my feet start to thrash, but I am getting nowhere. This is it, I think. Finally.

  With that realization I let my arms go still, and my legs go limp. I feel my body sinking and the water filling me, until I am curled on the sand at the base of the sea.

  The sun is a quivering yellow eye. I get to my feet, and to my great surprise, begin to walk with ease on the bottom of the ocean floor.

  Nathaniel doesn't move the hour I sit on his bed, watching him sleep. But when I touch his hair, unable to hold back any longer, he rolls over and blinks at me. "It's still dark," he whispers.

  "I know. It's not morning."

  I watch him trying to puzzle this out: What could have brought me, then, to wake him in the middle of the night? How am I supposed to explain to him that the next time I have the opportunity to do this, his body might reach the whole length of the bed? That by the time I come back, the boy I left behind will no longer exist?

  "Nathaniel," I say, with a shuddering breath, "I might be going away."

  He sits up. "You can't, Mommy." Smiling, he even finds a reason. "We just got back."

  "I know ... but this isn't my choice."

  Nathaniel pulls the covers up to his chest, suddenly looking very small. "What did I do this time?"

  With a sob I pull him onto my lap and bury my face against his hair. He rubs his nose against my neck, and it reminds me so much of him as an infant that I cannot breathe. I would trade everything, now, to have those minutes back, tucked into a miser's lockbox. Even the ordinary moments--driving in the car, cleaning up the playroom, cooking dinner with Nathaniel. They are no less miraculous simply because they are something we did as a matter of routine. It is not what you do with a child that brings you together ... it is the fact that you are lucky enough to do it at all.

  I draw away to look at his face. That bow of a mouth, the slope of his nose. His eyes, preserving memories like the amber they resemble. Keep them, I think. Watch over them for me.

  By now, I am crying hard. "I promise, it won't be forever. I promise that you can come see me. And I want you to know every minute of every day that I'm away from you ... I'm thinking of how long it'll be before I come back."

  Nathaniel wraps his arms around my neck and holds on for dear life. "I don't want you to go."

  "I know." I draw back, holding his wrists loosely.

  "I'll come with you."

  "I wish you could. But I need someone here to take care of your father."

  Nathaniel shakes his head. "But I'll miss you."

  "And I'll miss you," I say softly. "Hey, how about if we make a pact?"

  "What's that?"

  "A decision two people make together." I try for a smile. "Let's agree not to miss each other. Is that a deal?"

  Nathaniel looks at me for a long moment. "I don't think I can do it," he confesses.

  I pull him close again.